2015
Company
Documents about 2015
Playing Outside the Binary: 6 Things We Learned From 14,000 Transgender & Non-Binary Gamers
The gaming landscape is undergoing a significant demographic shift, with transgender and non-binary individuals now representing 5% of the total gaming population, a fivefold increase since 2015.
- Transgender and non-binary gamers are primarily motivated by Fantasy and Design, showing a clear preference for immersion and self-expression over competitive or mastery-based gameplay.
- The prevalence of trans and non-binary identification is higher among younger gamers, reaching 5.6% in the under-18 cohort compared to 3.7% among those 35 and older.
- Trans and non-binary gamers show significantly lower interest in Power, Strategy, Challenge, and Competition compared to the general gaming population.
Case Study: Counter-Strike's Marketplace
The marketplace within Counter-Strike: Global Offensive serves as a primary case study for understanding mature, player-driven game economies.
- Game-balancing updates act as immediate catalysts for market volatility, as weapon nerfs trigger sharp demand shocks that cause associated skin prices to fluctuate significantly.
- The introduction of new loot boxes creates an income effect that increases player purchasing power, driving up prices for budget-tier skins while simultaneously exerting downward pressure on premium items.
- New content releases trigger substitution effects, where demand for established, older items declines as player attention and capital shift toward newer inventory.
Angry Birds 2 Surpasses $500 Million in Lifetime Revenue
Angry Birds 2 has reached a significant financial milestone, surpassing $500 million in lifetime revenue from in-app purchases since its launch in July 2015.
- Angry Birds 2 has generated over $500 million in lifetime in-app purchase revenue since its July 2015 launch, representing nearly half of Rovio’s $1.1 billion total portfolio earnings.
- The United States is the primary market for Angry Birds 2, contributing 63% of the game's total lifetime revenue.
- While the Apple App Store accounts for 56% of revenue, Google Play drives the majority of user acquisition, representing 63% of the game's 360.5 million total downloads.
Ginx TV Hires Capital A to Explore Sale
Ginx TV, a London-based media company specializing in gaming and esports content, has engaged the venture capital and private equity firm Capital A to explore a potential sale or new investment.
- London-based gaming and esports media company Ginx TV has hired the firm Capital A to explore a potential acquisition or new investment.
- The company is pitching a strategy to investors that would retain current CEO Michiel Bakker and keep the existing staff of 21 full-time employees and 17+ outsourced roles intact.
- Ginx TV generated approximately £2.2 million ($2.5 million USD) in revenue for the 2022 fiscal year.
Toa Dunn Announces Exit From Riot Games
Toa Dunn, the longtime Head of Music at Riot Games, announced his departure from the company in February 2023. After a tenure spanning nearly a decade, Dunn exited to pursue new, undisclosed professional opportunities.
- Toa Dunn, the longtime Head of Riot Games Music, announced his departure from the company in February 2023.
- Dunn spent nearly a decade at Riot Games, joining the company in 2013 as a music development producer.
- During his tenure, Dunn led the development of music, television, and film initiatives, including the creation of production standards across the company's ecosystem.
R10 Announcement
The UK Games Fund has announced the successful completion of its tenth funding round, marking a significant milestone by surpassing 200 total projects supported since the initiative began in 2015.
- The UK Games Fund selected 48 independent studios and solo developers for its Round 10 funding cycle, marking a milestone that brings the total number of funded projects to over 200.
- Round 10 attracted over 110 applications from across the UK, with the majority of successful recipients beginning their funded work in January 2023.
- Applicants in this round could pitch for a full £25,000 grant or a tiered structure consisting of an initial £12,000 grant with the potential for an additional £18,000.
"War Never Changes." Gender Roles and the Transformative Potential for Role Reversal in Roleplay Games with Post-Apocalyptic Settings
Marie-Luise Meier's article examines how post-apocalyptic roleplaying games handle gender, arguing that the apocalypse's "reset" of society offers a rare opportunity to challenge hegemonic gender norms, an opportunity the genre rarely takes up.
- Marie-Luise Meier argues that post-apocalyptic games rarely exploit the genre's "reset" of society to challenge gender norms, and that most reinstate traditional hierarchies without critique while coding technology and science as male.
- Fallout 4 (2015) is analysed as reinforcing binary gender oppositions through its cyclical, nuclear-family-centred narrative, associating violence, heroism, and fatherhood with men and confining women to supportive or victim roles.
- Fallout 4's binary character creation, with gendered hairstyles and body options, is cited as enforcing a strict gender system through gameplay itself.
Chinese Console Market Revenues: 2021 Analysis
The Chinese console market experienced significant growth in 2021, surpassing $2 billion in total revenue for the first time.
- The Chinese console market reached $2 billion in revenue in 2021, marking a 17% year-over-year increase.
- Grey market channels dominated the industry in 2021, accounting for 79.6% of all console, game, and service revenues.
- The console player base grew by 18.3% in 2021 to reach 15.9 million users.
Hypercasual: Past, Present, Future
The hypercasual mobile gaming sector has evolved from a niche category of simple, ad-supported titles into a dominant industry force, accounting for over one-quarter of all mobile game downloads.
- Hypercasual games are defined by three core pillars: simple pick-up-and-play mechanics, a free-to-play model monetized via in-game ads, and the ability to achieve millions of downloads.
- The hypercasual market experienced massive scale, reaching 1.1 billion downloads between 2014–2015 and surging to 11 billion downloads during the 2018–2019 period.
- The industry has shifted from simple 'endless' gameplay to complex progression systems, with modern titles increasingly incorporating meta-elements like decoration and global leaderboards to improve retention.
£8 Million Funding for the UK Games Fund and Tranzfuser
The UK government has committed £8 million in new funding to support the nation’s early-stage independent video games sector over a three-year period.
- The UK government has committed £8 million in funding over three years to support the early-stage independent video games sector.
- Since its inception in 2015, the UK Games Fund has provided grants to nearly 200 early-stage game development studios to support the creation of original intellectual property.
- The funding supports the continuation of the Tranzfuser program, an annual competition designed to help graduates transition into long-term careers within the games industry.
The Impact of Kickstarter on Board Game Design
This paper, presented at DiGRA 2022 by Gordon Calleja of the University of Malta, examines how Kickstarter and similar crowdfunding platforms such as Gamefound have reshaped board game design, production, marketing, and distribution.
- Crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Gamefound have connected backers' purchasing power directly to designers, enabling games that traditional publishers would have rejected as lacking a market, being too costly to produce, or being insufficiently appealing.
- The paper argues this shift has weakened the influence of conventional gatekeepers (publishers, distributors, and to some degree reviewers) and disrupted the traditional three-tier distribution model, with changes that appear largely irreversible.
- Kickstarter has raised expectations for visual aesthetics and component quality, and these expectations shape design decisions from the earliest stages of ideation.
"Fear the Old Blood": The Gothicism of Bloodborne
Bloodborne, FromSoftware's 2015 action role-playing game, is examined here as a sustained work of Gothic horror, with its atmosphere, narrative structure, and imagery read through established critical frameworks of the Gothic and the Lovecraftian.
- The report's central claim is that Bloodborne's gradual empowerment of the player does not dissolve its Gothic mood: a pervasive threatening gaze keeps pressure on the player, who must assemble a fragmented narrative like a detective, while themes of cosmic indifference and Frankensteinian hubris persist throughout.
- The analysis frames Bloodborne's Gothicism through Krzywinska's account of Gothic in games, which identifies coordinating elements such as the false hero, mise-en-scène, affective states, style, and function.
- Doubling and the uncanny are shown through the imposter Iosefka and a lifeless doll modeled on Lady Maria, which together expose the obsessive, displaced desire of Gehrman.